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The 25th Amendment is pretty much worded in a way that guarantees it's never going to happen in the only scenarios anyone would ever want to use it.

__________________- "Ernest Hemingway once wrote that the world is a fine place and worth fighting for. I agree with the second part." - Detective Sommerset
- "Stupidity does not cancel out stupidity to yield genius. It breeds like a bucket-full of coked out hamsters." - The Oatmeal
- "To the best of my knowledge the only thing philosophy has ever proven is that Descartes could think." - SMBC

The press has always (or for any of our lifetimes anyways) been held at a higher standard than politicians (until Fox News came along). Sad as it is, we expect a degree of lying from politicians. The current POTUS has just taken it to extremes.

The old joke, "How do you know if a politician is lying? His lips are moving.", was a humorous exaggeration until Trump came along. In Trump's case, it's disturbingly close to the truth.

'Lodestar' is an anagram for 'dares lot'. I bet there are other clues hidden in the text.

The whole thing is viral marketing for the next Dan Brown novel.

__________________- "Ernest Hemingway once wrote that the world is a fine place and worth fighting for. I agree with the second part." - Detective Sommerset
- "Stupidity does not cancel out stupidity to yield genius. It breeds like a bucket-full of coked out hamsters." - The Oatmeal
- "To the best of my knowledge the only thing philosophy has ever proven is that Descartes could think." - SMBC

__________________"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law

Or the author handed the text to a cut-out, who forwarded it to the New York Times under their own name. The editor would get in direct contact with the cut-out, who would claim to be the real author. The editor would have no way of knowing it was a trick.

Come on- do you really think that the NY Times would have been so casual about confirming the identity of its author given the visibility of the Op-ed, its impact, and the inevitable rabid attempts to discredit it? They have extensive procedures to confirm even far less important stories/pieces and a large legal department to ensure that they do so properly.

So, we are now holding the NYT editorial board to a higher standard than the President of the United States. Bizarro world.

That doesn't follow from anything I said.

__________________"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law

Actually impeachment is limited to "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." It dos not apply to unfitness in any other way.

On the other hand, "unfitness" can be applied to the impeachment process in a wide range of ways, thanks to the phrasing, "high crimes and misdemeanors". That's why I think it's a better match for what people are wanting, which is to remove the President under any pretext. Impeachment admits a lot more pretexts than the 25th.

Quote:

The 25th amendment was created expressly to deal with if the President was "unable" to perform their duties, with "unable" not defined in the amendment but left to be defined first by the cabinet, and, if rebutted by the President, to be defined by Congress.

No. The test for inability is explicitly described in the amendment. Congress is invoked to resolve disputes about the outcome of the test, because while the test is clear, it is not immune to dispute.

Quote:

The amendment clearly is designed to include "medically unfit as in unconscious" as falling within the category "unable". I believe the drafters of the amendment, and most others, would view "medically unfit as in clinically and seriously insane" as also falling under the "unable" category.

Certainly. Likewise, "made to pass the test of ability under duress" would fall under the "unable" category.

But the two questions are very different. "Is the president unable to act in the role, despite appearances?" is a much narrower question than "is the president acting in the role so badly that he should be removed?". Thus, since both questions require two thirds of Congress to support the desired outcome, impeachment is a much better fit for pursuing that outcome. One obvious reason this is so is that for the impeachment process, Congress doesn't have to explore the President's inner motives, only the external results. If the President is behaving badly, Congress can impeach him on that basis alone. If it's a 25th Amendment dispute, Congress has to actually answer the question of mental health, instead of simply examining the outcome.

The bombshell is a inside confirmation of what we thought we knew before.

That is precisely why you shouldn't simply accept it as true. It's potentially a textbook example of confirmation bias. Without any way to independently verify that information, let alone a name of someone staking their reputation on it, it's not actually confirmation of anything. Your state of knowledge hasn't actually changed at all.

__________________"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law

Primarily, yes. But you don't seriously think she thought the NYT was right to publish it, do you?

__________________"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law

That is precisely why you shouldn't simply accept it as true. It's potentially a textbook example of confirmation bias. Without any way to independently verify that information, let alone a name of someone staking their reputation on it, it's not actually confirmation of anything. Your state of knowledge hasn't actually changed at all.

We do know that someone inside the administration is claiming it's true.

That is precisely why you shouldn't simply accept it as true. It's potentially a textbook example of confirmation bias. Without any way to independently verify that information, let alone a name of someone staking their reputation on it, it's not actually confirmation of anything. Your state of knowledge hasn't actually changed at all.

You never accept articles based on anonymous sources? You seem to be grasping at straws here.

__________________REJ (Robert E Jones) posting anonymously under my real name for 30 years.

Make a fire for a man and you keep him warm for a day. Set him on fire and you keep him warm for the rest of his life.

Come on- do you really think that the NY Times would have been so casual about confirming the identity of its author given the visibility of the Op-ed, its impact, and the inevitable rabid attempts to discredit it? They have extensive procedures to confirm even far less important stories/pieces and a large legal department to ensure that they do so properly.

Taking Soviet propaganda at face value this way was completely misleading, as talking with ordinary Russians might have revealed even at the time. Duranty’s prize-winning articles quoted not a single one – only Stalin, who forced farmers all over the Soviet Union into collective farms and sent those who resisted to concentration camps.

[...]

Some of Duranty’s editors criticized his reporting as tendentious, but The Times kept him as a correspondent until 1941. Since the 1980’s, the paper has been publicly acknowledging his failures.

Despite the obvious problems with Duranty's work, the NYT published it anyway, and it took them another fifty years to admit their mistake. Appeals to the editorial integrity of the New York Times, and to the reliability of its due diligence, do not impress.

You never accept articles based on anonymous sources? You seem to be grasping at straws here.

If there's only one anonymous source with no confirmation, then yes, an article is suspect. Most journalists know this. Most readers should too.

__________________"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law

Unfortunately the wording in the 25th is "unable" to perform his duties, not unfit. Besides which, if his cabinet did so then Trump would relieve them all, and they could no longer work covertly to thwart his worst impulses. And all for naught. Since there is about a 0.000001% chance that congress, needing a 2:1 majority in both houses, would actually remove him.

I'm not sure that it does. While it plays directly into the "resistance" belief that Trump is unfit, it also plays directly into the Trump base belief that there's an unelected bureaucracy that's trying to undermine the results of the 2016 election. It's not a given that the first message will be more important than the second message. It will certainly help polarize things, but the overall effect is hard to gauge.

__________________"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law

Taking Soviet propaganda at face value this way was completely misleading, as talking with ordinary Russians might have revealed even at the time. Duranty’s prize-winning articles quoted not a single one – only Stalin, who forced farmers all over the Soviet Union into collective farms and sent those who resisted to concentration camps.

[...]

Some of Duranty’s editors criticized his reporting as tendentious, but The Times kept him as a correspondent until 1941. Since the 1980’s, the paper has been publicly acknowledging his failures.

Despite the obvious problems with Duranty's work, the NYT published it anyway, and it took them another fifty years to admit their mistake. Appeals to the editorial integrity of the New York Times, and to the reliability of its due diligence, do not impress.

That you have to reach back 80 years for a counter suggests that the NYT editorial board is generally trustworthy.

__________________

To survive election season on a skeptics forum, one must understand Hymie-the-Robot.

That is precisely why you shouldn't simply accept it as true. It's potentially a textbook example of confirmation bias.

You're absolutely right, which is why I don't.

However, since it paints the same picture as Wolff and Woodard, in addition to many other 'hints' we've been getting, and that the Times knows who wrote the piece, I see that as good confirmation of its authenticity. Trump's and Sanders' reaction to it just seals the deal. This op-ed doesn't exist in a vaccuum.

No. The test for inability is explicitly described in the amendment. Congress is invoked to resolve disputes about the outcome of the test, because while the test is clear, it is not immune to dispute.

Certainly. Likewise, "made to pass the test of ability under duress" would fall under the "unable" category.

But the two questions are very different. "Is the president unable to act in the role, despite appearances?" is a much narrower question than "is the president acting in the role so badly that he should be removed?". Thus, since both questions require two thirds of Congress to support the desired outcome, impeachment is a much better fit for pursuing that outcome. One obvious reason this is so is that for the impeachment process, Congress doesn't have to explore the President's inner motives, only the external results. If the President is behaving badly, Congress can impeach him on that basis alone. If it's a 25th Amendment dispute, Congress has to actually answer the question of mental health, instead of simply examining the outcome.

Impeachment (and conviction): "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

25th Amendment:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office."[/quote]

I borked my quote tags, which seems to have caused you to bork yours. I apologize.

Also, I don't see the point of quoting the text of the two passages. Those are the starting points, we've already moved forward from there.

An anonymous source vetted by one of the biggest news organizations in the country isn't the same thing as an anonymous claim.

I can see you just itching to lay down the "One True Skeptic Card" but just put it back in the deck.

__________________- "Ernest Hemingway once wrote that the world is a fine place and worth fighting for. I agree with the second part." - Detective Sommerset
- "Stupidity does not cancel out stupidity to yield genius. It breeds like a bucket-full of coked out hamsters." - The Oatmeal
- "To the best of my knowledge the only thing philosophy has ever proven is that Descartes could think." - SMBC

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